Italian patriot and art historian; developer of a method of
connoisseurship which identified attribution via minute characteristics of
artists. Morelli was born to a protestant family, a minority in Italy
(originally of French Huguenot decent).
Raised in Bergamo, he attended the (Swiss) Kantonschule at Aarau between 1826 and 1832.
From 1833-1838 he studied medicine at the universities of Munich and Erlangen because
of the Italian proscription against protestants in universities. His study
of anatomy and human observation assisted him in forming his conclusions in later years
regarding connoisseurship. Morelli graduated in medicine under the
anatomist Ignaz Döllinger (1770-1841), but never practiced. His early interest in iconography appeared in a
mock iconographical study, under the pseudonym Nicholas Schäffer in 1836. A
second parody on the aesthetic approach to art was published in 1839, again
under the Schäffer pseudonym, Das Miasma Diabolicum. Morelli
traveled to
Berlin in 1838 where he me naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the artists Karl Blechen
(1802-1872), Ludwig
Tieck (1773-1853), the architect Wilhelm Stier (1799-1856), but most
importantly, the art historians Karl Friedrich von Rumohr and Berlin
Museum director Gustav Waagen. That same year he was
instrumental in assisting the geological morphology of the Swiss
geologist, Louis Agassiz (1807-1873). Until 1840, Morelli lived in Paris, where he gave up
science for good and met the dealer Otto Mündler. It was Mündler
who gave Morelli his first introduction to art connoisseurship.
Morelli returned to Italy in 1840, embracing his birth country and acting as a
conduit for the intellectual traditions of the north. He translated Johann
Pieter Eckermann’s conversations with Goethe (though never published) and
Friedrich Schelling’s lectures on his aesthetics in 1845 and on Dante in 1858. Morelli served in the Risorgimento
of Italy in
the 1860s, becoming a Senator in unified Italy in 1873. He chaired many commissions
in the new government on
art, most important were the ones enacting legislation forbidding export of
art treasures from Italy and the standardization of conservation practices in Italian
museums, the latter with restorers Luigi Cavenaghi (1844-1918) and Giovanni Secco-Suardo
(1798-1873). Perhaps through
his previous connections with Mündler, who had worked for the National Gallery
in London and now sold them pictures, he met British collectors in Milan, including Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, Sir James Hudson (1810-1885), British ambassador at Turin, and the amateur
archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard. Morelli acquired
pictures for Layard and was among the first
to whom he taught his technique of connoisseurship. Only after age sixty
did Morelli
published his famous methodology of art history. It first appeared as a
series of articles in the Zeitschrift für
bildende Kunst beginning in 1876 and later as book in 1880. His treatise,
Die Werke italienischer Meister, was written in German under the pseudonym
"Ivan Lermolieff" (a Russian-ized anagram of the Italian form his
name). The work is a dialogue between an Italian
master scholar (Schwarze) and his Russian pupil, Lermolieff, ostensibly the author of the
book. Their topics were the major paintings in the
galleries of Rome, Dresden, and Berlin. Eric Fernie points that the conversational
organization of the book allowed Morelli to criticize contemporary approaches
and individual scholar's opinions on art. The book contested may accepted attributions. The two
personalities discuss works with the Italian often reattributing the work, and
the Russian providing supporting evidence (a drawing, for example he knows) as
well popular responses. In this way, Morelli could criticize a work of art
without ever declaring it a fake. Morelli followed this with a series of articles on Raphael,
appearing between 1881 and 1882.
His collected writings, Kunstkritische Studien, edited by himself, were
published beginning in 1890. The same year he met the young Bernard Berenson, who became perhaps the most important exponent of Morelli's method.
Morelli provided letters of introduction to many sacristans to allow Berenson to
examine works of art for his later, famous books. Morelli died before the third volume
of his critical studies appeared; the volume
was subsequently edited by Gustavo Frizzoni. His immediate influence was on Frizzoni as well as the art historians Jean Paul Richter, Adolfo Venturi, Berenson, and Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes.
In 1893, Richter's wife translated Die Werke italienischer
Meister into English.

Morelli's connoisseurship employing identification of the "hands" of
an
artist--both literally and in the figurative sense of the characteristics of
representation--was immensely popular for a group of art historians who
immediately followed his generation. Scholars as different as John Davidson Beazley, Berenson and Julius von Schlosser used his technique directly to establish their own reputations (Schlosser wrote
effusively of his meeting with Morelli, arranged by Franz Wickhoff). This
technique, frequently termed "scientific" art history in the 19th and early
20th-century, contrasted with documentary and scholars who viewed art history as
a historical phenomenon, such as J. J. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcasselle. His scientific classification drew from his time with Döllinger and the
French comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Morelli's conversancy with
German academics allowed him to debate the issues of art history on their
terms. His approach to renaissance art contrasts that of, for
example, Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Berlin Musuem, whose art
history was heavily theoretical. Freud used Morelli's method in his 1914 study
of Michelangelo’s Moses and an aspect of the approach found favor with Edgar Wind in a 1963 essay. Morelli's reattributions
though wide-ranging, largely met with acceptance. Overall, Morelli possessed a strong
anti-intellectualism. He was
completely against written art histories, noting that, "the history of art can
only be studied properly before the works of art themselves. Books are apt to
warp a man's judgment." For Morelli, "the only true record [of art history] is
the work of art itself," writing elsewhere that the "art historian will
gradually disappear, [and that would be] no great loss either." His
anti-academicism was visited on even Wickhoff, head of the
so-called Vienna school of art history, whom he accused of taking the vocation
of art history too lightly.